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    •  

      Valerie Gillies

      "Valerie Gillies writes like the wind and jinks like a hare in the fields of language"

      Get in touch
    • Valerie Gillies creates a poetry that lives up to Scotland’s resurgent powers.

      Her language is musical, her themes elemental.

      Mapping the country as she finds it today, she is alive to immediate experience.

    •  

      When the grass dances

       

       

      Valerie's latest work is a collaboration with photographer Rebecca Marr among the wild grasses of Scotland.

      Visit the collection here.
    • Read Valerie's poems

      Frog Spring

      From The Spring Teller

      The Harp to Aeolus

      Inscription for the Wind-Harp by Mark Norris,

      installed in the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh

      The Mermaid Pool

      From The Spring Teller

      To Edinburgh

      Written during Valerie's time as Edinburgh's Makar

      Hear Valerie reading a selection of her work here at the Poetry Archive

    • from Wych Elm ed. Max Coleman, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2009. Wych Elm Exhibition: Hand-painted lettering by Susie Leiper on two matching pieces of Elm prepared by Roger Hall.

    • Biography

      "Born in Canada, brought up in Lanarkshire, and educated in Edinburgh and India...

      Gillies writes a richly varied poetry which celebrates life."

      Douglas Gifford, Scottish Literature

      Former Edinburgh Makar, Associate of Harvard University, Royal Literary Fellow

       

      Valerie Gillies is an internationally known and highly regarded poet. She was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, 2005 - 2008.

      Her poetry collections include Tweed Journey (1989) which has been described as ‘a key text in contemporary writing’ (SB Kelly), The Spring Teller (2008) and The Cream of the Well: New and selected poems (2015). Other award-winning volumes include Each Bright Eye (1977), The Ringing Rock (1995), The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies.

       

      Valerie writes in regions from the Borders to the Highlands, from the Inner Hebrides to the Angus glens, from Orkney to Galloway.

      She often works collaboratively with visual artists, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: Wild Men and Tame Animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a year-long collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

       

      She received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs (Luath, 2008).

       

      Valerie is an inspirational teacher of creative writing in schools, colleges, and universities, and she has held several writing fellowships across the country. She was a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink and is now a trainer with Lapidus.

       

      Valerie lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the Celtic scholar Professor William Gillies. They have a son and two daughters, six grandchildren and a whippet.

    • Publications

      "all the time I was there I was walking in your poem"

      Anne Matheson, Biggar Public Art

      "Gillies' poetry shows a masterly fluency with form kept taut by its over-riding themes... this is polyglot poetry, yet it has a remarkably unbookish and outdoors feel."

      S B Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

       

      Valerie Gillies' poetry collections include The Cream of the Well: New and Selected Poems (2015), The Spring Teller (2008) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies such as The Faber Book of Scottish Poetry. Valerie has won the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry and three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards.

       

      Her work includes many collaborative projects with visual artists and musicians, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in Southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: wild men and tame animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.

       

      "A poet of unusual technical ability"

      Shirley Toulson, British Book News

       

      "I like the way in which these poems are rooted in the elemental world... the craft and truth are one."

      Robert Nye, The Times

       

      "Gillies writes of place, history, landscape, myth and legend. The Lightning Tree will enhance her reputation... Its language is musical, energetic, approachable; its subject-matter, life enhancing and invigorating; its themes fundamental and provocative."

      Douglas Lipton, Northwords

       

      Collections of Poetry

       

      2015 The Cream of the Well, Luath

       

      2008 The Spring Teller, Luath

       

      2002 The Lightning Tree, Polygon

       

      2000 Men and Beasts, with photographer Rebecca Marr, Luath Press (non-fiction and poetry)

       

      1998 St Kilda Waulking Song, artist's book with Will Maclean, Morning Star

       

      1995 The Ringing Rock, Scottish Cultural Press

       

      1992 Poeti della Scozia Contemporanea, Supernova, Venezia [translation]

       

      1990 The Jordanstone Folio, with 12 artists, Tay press

       

      1990 The Chanter's Tune, Canongate

       

      1998 The Tweed Journey, Canongate

       

      1987 Leopardi: A Scottis Quair, Edinburgh University Press [translation]

       

      1984 Bed of Stone, Canongate

       

      1977 Each Bright Eye, Canongate

       

      1975 Poetry Introduction 3, Faber

       

      1971 Trio, New Rivers Press, New York

       

       

       

      Contributions to Anthologies, selected

      2006

       The New Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, Deerpark Press


      2005

       
       Tweed Rivers, Platform Press, Luath Press


      2002


       Scottish Literature in the Twentieth Century, Scottish Cultural Press


      2002


       The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, Faber


      2000


       Love for Love and Atoms of Delight, pocketbooks


      2000


       The Jewel Box CD, Scottish Poetry Library


      1998

       
       Homage to the Carmina Gadelica, Morning star

      Where to Buy

      If you are unable to buy Valerie's books from your local bookshop, they are available to buy online from:

      Luath Press Bookshop

      The Scottish Poetry Library Bookshop

      Amazon & The Book Depository

    • Reviews

      (selected)

       

      'Valerie Gillies: Inscriptions in the Wind',  Article by Laura Severin, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Oxford Academic, September 2020 Read here

       

      ‘The Cream of the Well’, Review by Hamza M Hussain, DURA, Dundee Review of the Arts, 2017

       

      ‘Locating Valerie Gillies’s The Cream of the Well: A Critical Introduction to the Poems and an Interview with the Poet’. Laura Severin, Scottish Literary Review 9.1 (Spring/Summer 2017) 115 – 139. 

       

      ‘The Spring Teller’, Review by Ted Bowman, Northwords Now, Issue 23, Spring 2013, pp 20 – 21, www.northwordsnow.co.uk

    • Poetry in Public Places

      Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works

      'Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works with contemporary sculptors. The poems from these public arts installations, though included in The Lightning Tree (2002), must be seen with their sculptures in order to be fully understood, since they transform the landscape through the ever-present perception of the viewer.
      In this way, Gillies finally creates an art form that lives up to the Scottish landscape's 'recreative' (rather than definitive) powers."

       

      Professor Laura Severin
      North Carolina State University

       

       

       

      ‘The Harp to Aeolus’
      Poem-inscription for the Wind-Harp made from the wood of the wych-elm tree by Mark Norris, harp-maker, for the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

      See Valerie recite online in the film of The Wych Elm Project

       

       

      Inscriptions

      Poetry by Valerie Gillies for site-specific installations.
       

      2007 Inscription for the opening of the new Edinburgh City Council headquarters at Waverley Court

       

      2005 A Place Apart, text handwritten by Valerie Gillies and screenprinted by Evelyn Pottie for The Quiet Room, Marie Curie Hospice, Edinburgh

       

      2002 Below the Surface, text set in Albertus and screenprinted by Brian McBeath for The Trimontium Trust Museum, Melrose

       

      2001 Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, with sculptor and letter-carver Gary Fay, Leaderfoot near Melrose

       

      2001 The Glide, text in bronze, with sculptor Denys Mitchell, at Coldstream

       

      2001 Quick Water, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey, at Kirroughtree, Galloway Forest Park

       

      1998 Tweed's Well, panel text in stone, with sculptor Fly Freeman, at the source of the River Tweed

      Exhibitions Cross media work with visual artists

      2008

       Dewpoint with Carol Dunbar and Rebecca Marr, travelled to Stuttgart


      2007

       
       Close, Closer, Closest with fibre artist Anna S. King.


      2001

       
       Galloway Forest Park, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey


      2001

       
      Coldstream, text on bronze handrail, with sculptor Denys Mitchell


      2001


       Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, letter-carver Gary Fay


      2000


       Men and Beasts, exhibition with Rebecca Marr, art.tm gallery, Inverness & on tour


      1999


       Scotland to the World to Scotland, National Museums of Scotland


      1998


       Pax Romana, City Art Centre, Edinburgh Festival Exhibitions


      1998


       Tweed's Well, panel text on site, with sculptor Fly Freeman, Scottish Borders


      1998 

      Poems by Prescription, Artlink Hospital Galleries, Edinburgh and Lothians

      1996

       
      A Night of Islands, with Will Maclean, Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven


      1994


       River Spirits, touring Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh


      1990


       Tweed Journey, with Shelley Klein and Savourna Stevenson, Scottish Borders

      Workshops (selected)

      Current work

      Maggie's Centre - Developing and delivering Journalling, Creative Writing and Writers' Café online courses

      Lapidus - Valerie delivers training for trainers on the Lapidus programme

       

      Previous work

      Artlink

       

       

       

    • Edinburgh Makar

      A spatchcock town, the ribcage split open
      like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie.

      Valerie was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, in 2005. Her 'official' poems include The Balm Well in 2005, A Place Apart in 2006 and To Edinburgh, a poem composed for the opening by HRH Princess Anne of the new Edinburgh District Council building, Waverley Court, in 2007.

       

    • Spring Teller

      "The Spring Teller has become a project on a grand scale. I continue to travel to the springs and wells,

      learning the lore surrounding them and the cures sought at them."

      Valerie received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs. She completed this after travelling to many locations in Scotland and Ireland. The collection was published by Luath in 2008.

       

      Every spring has its own song – from potent legendary wells to inspiring new sources. Listening to the voice of each one, world renowned poet Valerie Gillies composed a new poem to fit. “The Spring Teller” records the author’s remarkable journey across Scotland, which took over three years and included visits to over a hundred springs. Each thought-provoking poem mirrors the flow of the water, from still wells locked in the inner city to the free-flowing springs of mountain or glen. In ten sections Gillies’ poetry captures the mineral properties of these springs and explores them as sites of healing and cleansing, as places of pilgrimage and modern meetings, of connection between human and nature and, through her own form of poetic environmental activism, expresses how we should preserve these natural wonders.”The Spring Teller” contains an intriguing introduction, landmark poems and a new map to help the reader visit these memorable places, while the photographs show the beauty of each spring. This book is a unique guide to the locations of springs in Scotland, their history and folklore and an exploration of their mysterious properties.

       

       

      Buy The Spring Teller

       

    • Despatches

      The main focus for Valerie's new writing in 2021 was the collaborative project 'When the grass dances' with artist Rebecca Marr. The collection is presented in an online exhibition. See here. Valerie will be giving readings and workshops around the new collection in 2022.

       

      Valerie is working with Maggie's Centre Edinburgh facilitating writing workshops throughout this coming year. Residential training workshops for Lapidus with co-trainer Larry Butler are planned.

       

      The recent Canongate publication 'The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse' edited by Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson includes Valerie's poem Frog Spring. 

       

       

       

    • Images: Valerie's portrait by Lachlan Gillies / Edinburgh by einszweifrei / all other images Rebecca Marr

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